Discussion: COH/COV Myspace!
By
Alwaysseen,
Posted on: 2007-06-04 15:25 in News, Events and Announcement Discussion
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Remember the Paragon Times?
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Speak of the devil...
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Yeah......first one in how long? How long til the next one?
And not to slight UnSub in anyway but unless he started getting a paycheck from Cryptic or NCSoft it just another example of something that used to come from them and now comes from us.
Its like going to Starbucks to get a 6$ cup of coffee, finding that the Barista is only there to take your money now and that you have to make your own 6$ cup of coffee with a set of directions scribbled on a napkin. You may get a decent cup of coffee but odds are very good that it doesn't taste 'right' and you still got charged 6$.
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Remember the Paragon Times?
[/ QUOTE ]
Speak of the devil...
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah......first one in how long? How long til the next one?
And not to slight UnSub in anyway but unless he started getting a paycheck from Cryptic or NCSoft it just another example of something that used to come from them and now comes from us.
Its like going to Starbucks to get a 6$ cup of coffee, finding that the Barista is only there to take your money now and that you have to make your own 6$ cup of coffee with a set of directions scribbled on a napkin. You may get a decent cup of coffee but odds are very good that it doesn't taste 'right' and you still got charged 6$.
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Touché. I'll admit that the last article did feel different. However, if you give the original articles at a value of 1, I suppose you could give the latest article a .75 (if one were to make a serial comparison as opposed to A vs B (apples vs oranges)).
But I still argue that 1 > 0, and .75 > 0.
OTOH, IIRC, it was stated that the Times take up a lot of time to make (take that as you will, personally I'm skeptic), which is why they were discontinued (until recently as it were). There is also the argument that not much of the active playerbase reads the Times.
But now that the SOP is in place to link the updater to the Forums (since the tech already existed), how much would forum readership go up with something like the Times in place (ala the power pool polls held a couple of weeks ago)?
Back more on topic however, the Forums are meant mostly to benefit the existing active playerbase. Although they could be used to create more visibility for the public, it's not as effective IMHO than doing something on myspace, or even the main web page (we're still waiting to see some of these other web initiatives Lighthouse! 
). So although I am excited to see the Times kinda-returning to the Forums, they still don't perform the same basic function that a myspace page does.
(And to a lesser point, the myspace page doesn't take the staff off the hook for improving the main page, I'll concede that as well (Fan Site portal, anyone? 
))
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Cryptic is a Vendor....that is, they provide a service to NCSoft for which they are paid, under contract you can be sure, but Cryptic doesn't get to negotiate their budget on a weekly or monthly basis.
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I know they are under contract - thus my line about how they agreed how they were going to split it before they got it.
You are saying that you want NCSoft to not spend money on myspace - which they haven't* - not really. You are saying that you want them to give more money than they have agreed to give Cryptic instead, which is why I brought up the bit about NCSoft can't due to it's obligation to it's owners (just like any store that uses vendors).
*NCSoft has a large staff - and some (like Ex & Lighthouse, CuppaJo, etc) are there for just one game a lot of them go where they are needed as they are needed. Leastwise, that is the impression I am left with. THem having this mysapce page done up was most likely just them getting something for the money they were paying someone while he was at work yet not working on anything.
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
Hey, what if they had a CoH/CoV Saturday morning half hour cartoon? It might be fun, it would advertise, and viewers might pick up some things they don't already know. Maybe hints about how things work, etc.
As far as MySpace, it's usualy pretty evil. Most pages bring my browser to its knees and I regret visiting. A lot of people/entities on MySpace think the more loud/busy/animated a page is, the better.
There's a site which is kinda like myspace, but for gamers:
http://www.characterplanet.com/
Impervia Girl
There has been a lot of discussion here, and thank you for keeping it flame free. Because I know some of you hold great disdain for Myspace.
I just wanted to comment on a few things.
Paragon Times: This is a wonderful addition to the "City of" franchise but the PT came along with someone's creative genius and for whatever reason they are no longer part of the project. Arctic_Sun has being doing his part to bring it back online using his own creativity and now branching out and allowing for some player involvement. Because this is official and hosted on our main page the turn around time is much slower than say the "City Scoop" which is entirely run by players. The Paragon Times must go through an arduous process each time it is produced, involving three NCsoft teams, Community, Web, & Legal. That can equate to a slower process overall.
Each time a Community team member comes they bring along with them a skill set, talents, and a vision for how they would like to interact with that community. When they leave, some of those things may in turn leave with them, and some may be carried on without them.
Lighthouse, Cricket, Cuppa, Aura they all have their own styles of interacting with and building community. We all come from diverse backgrounds and experience.
While each of us is certainly working towards acquisition and retention of our player community, each one of us will attempt to achieve this in a different way.
One of my ways is to gather and stratify community networks. In any given community you have aspects and entities that make that community viable.
There are three basic levels to community.
The Macro Community.... The big cheese, the whole kit and caboodle, basically all of "City of" this is the macro community.
The Mezzo Community.... Large groups that are factioned or separated by something. COH/COV, The servers, gender distinction. (Myspace would categorize here)
The Micro Community.... Smaller groups that qualify under the larger umbrella's but are more distinct in their characteristics. Groups & play styles like PvP, RP, Badgers, hardcore, casual, SG's/VG's, LGBTQA, etc.
My job as a Community Coordinator is to stabilize and help the community grow. I have to be paying attention to all the aspects of this community but sometimes decisions will be made based solely on the number of players it will affect.
Myspace was not created to be a source of advertising, but hopefully with some luck the return on investment of time and resources to create the space will far outweigh anything we lost.
Myspace was created to gather together an already viable mezzo community. I don't imagine too many people went out last night and created a page, but after only 48 hours we have over 2k members.
Nothing we will do on myspace will ever take precedent over the official boards and this forum.
Hopefully you will all continue to see areas where we let our talents and skills show up and help build the community, if we haven't yet found some way to support your mezzo or micro group please let me know. I am all ears, and while implementation may take time, if it can be done I will see a way to get there.
That's it, that's my schpeel, I didn't spend the last four years in web design 101 classes, or advertising, or business. I spent the last four years learning about people and hope to spend the next forty working with them.
Preach it, sister.
Why didn't the poll have more options? Such as:
do you use:
_ Myspace
_ Livejournal
_ Friendster
_ Facebook
_ (etc)
And put the first effort into the one you found the most players used? It seemed like the decision was premade, and the poll was not very informative. How few would have had to have used Myspace for other options to be explored? Less than 1%?
As for the friends list - if 33,000 CoH/CoV players use Myspace (which I doubt) then only a very few of them are friending it. There's a lot of selection bias in that poll.
And I thought the subscription numbers were notably higher than 100,000 anyway. At least 125,000 ? I haven't checked that MMO comparative population thing lately...
I guess it would come down to how many of our subscribers have multiple subscriptions? The subscription number is what cannot be represented properly because one individual can own as many accounts as they wish, they still only count as one individual in the community.
Certainly the numbers are skewed.
And you are correct it would have been more viable if we had asked in the format you suggested.
I didn't read through this entire thread, but did anyone mention that the layout is borked? I have viewed the page through IE and Firefox on two different computers and both do not show your contact table or photo. I know the links so can just hover and find.
Curious is this is just a problem somewhere on my end (hard to imagine with the system I run and how much time I spend on myspace without issues).
Cheers!
I have the same issue on Firefox and IE! Other myspace pages show just fine including my own!
@Hawkeyed
P.E.R.C. Senior Pinnacle Rep
[url="http://www.guildportal.com/Guild.aspx?GuildID=217406&TabID=1833355"]PERC Site[/url]
"Nothing grabs your attention like a pink fluffy bunny with imps dancing around it" -Kranny
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Paragon Times: This is a wonderful addition to the "City of" franchise but the PT came along with someone's creative genius and for whatever reason they are no longer part of the project. Arctic_Sun has being doing his part to bring it back online using his own creativity and now branching out and allowing for some player involvement. Because this is official and hosted on our main page the turn around time is much slower than say the "City Scoop" which is entirely run by players. The Paragon Times must go through an arduous process each time it is produced, involving three NCsoft teams, Community, Web, & Legal. That can equate to a slower process overall.
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Thanks for the clarification on this point Ex. I think many people (myself included) were somewhat confused by the (until recent) disappearance of the PT. This helps clarify what the real issue was, and, although the format has changed a little, I hope it becomes a re-continuing occurance on the web front, as it added a lot of background flavor (IMO) to the CoX storyline, especially in regards to issue tie-ins with the overarching storyline.
Having guest writers also adds a nice change of pace to it as well, IMO.
As for other web initiatives, any chance you could hire the EU web designer for a stint, for a US Cox web facelift?
I kid, I kid!
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I have the same issue on Firefox and IE! Other myspace pages show just fine including my own!
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OK, glad it is not just me then. I think something in their coding or layout is broken.
Cheers!
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I guess it would come down to how many of our subscribers have multiple subscriptions? The subscription number is what cannot be represented properly because one individual can own as many accounts as they wish, they still only count as one individual in the community.
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Surely NCSoft's Billing/Accounting people could tell you how many people are registering multiple accounts, assuming they're using their real names, or paying with the same credit card, for example.
Last count from NCSoft's report to stockholders was 143,127 subscribers North America+Euro combined. Of those, I would imagine 5-10% at most have multiple accounts just as a guess.
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I have the same issue on Firefox and IE! Other myspace pages show just fine including my own!
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OK, glad it is not just me then. I think something in their coding or layout is broken.
Cheers!
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We are looking into this now, the page was set up using IE 7 and Firefox 2 both of those work fine.
NOOOOOOOOO MYSPACE IS THE REALITY OF THE DEVIL!!!!!!
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NOOOOOOOOO MYSPACE IS THE REALITY OF THE DEVIL!!!!!!
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He pops up everywhere, that little scamp!
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I have the same issue on Firefox and IE! Other myspace pages show just fine including my own!
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OK, glad it is not just me then. I think something in their coding or layout is broken.
Cheers!
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We are looking into this now, the page was set up using IE 7 and Firefox 2 both of those work fine.
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What version are the people getting borked pages using?
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
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And not to slight UnSub in anyway but unless he started getting a paycheck from Cryptic or NCSoft it just another example of something that used to come from them and now comes from us.
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Because it got raised - nope, I didn't get any material payment for that article, nor did I ask for one. My "payment" for this work is that, for better or worse, I've written something that is now CoH/V canon. That's enough for me.
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Its like going to Starbucks to get a 6$ cup of coffee, finding that the Barista is only there to take your money now and that you have to make your own 6$ cup of coffee with a set of directions scribbled on a napkin. You may get a decent cup of coffee but odds are very good that it doesn't taste 'right' and you still got charged 6$.
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1) You shouldn't go to Starbucks in the first place.
2) At the end, you still get a cup of coffee.
As Ex has already said, it takes time for the process to be worked through. If by writing this article I got a PT published where there otherwise wouldn't have been one, then that's a positive end result.
[ QUOTE ]
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[ QUOTE ]
Remember the Paragon Times?
[/ QUOTE ]
Speak of the devil...
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah......first one in how long? How long til the next one?
And not to slight UnSub in anyway but unless he started getting a paycheck from Cryptic or NCSoft it just another example of something that used to come from them and now comes from us.
Its like going to Starbucks to get a 6$ cup of coffee, finding that the Barista is only there to take your money now and that you have to make your own 6$ cup of coffee with a set of directions scribbled on a napkin. You may get a decent cup of coffee but odds are very good that it doesn't taste 'right' and you still got charged 6$.
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O.o wth are you ordering that cost $6? My quad venti iced caramel macchiato only cost $4.89.
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The question was "Do you myspace?" 33% of the people who were polled answered yes.
That is one third of the polled people, there were roughly 1000 people who voted. Which is safely around 1 % of our over all subscription base.
So if 1/3 is my corollary number then it is safe to say that doing a page like this would benefit roughly 1/3rd of our current subscribers. This is a potentially large number of individuals.
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It is only safe to say that if the polled group can be expected to be representative of the wider playerbase, and I don't believe that this is a reasonable assumption here.
The most obvious source for potential selection bias would seem to be that people who frequent the forums were probably (much) more likely to participate in the poll. It is often said that people who frequent the forums are small portion of the total playerbase, and there is one thing in particular that they all have in common - they are all willing to go outside the game to obtain/share information about the game and/or socialize with others from the game, something that isn't necessarily the case for your average subscriber.
This would also seem to be what the Myspace page would be for, so there's a huge potential for selection bias.
It is very possible that a significant number of the CoH/CoV subscribers do have an interest in a Myspace page, but I do not believe that it is warranted to extrapolate from the results of this poll that 1/3 of the players have that interest.
hey I had a "COH" myspace 'tribute' type page in my 'top 8' for months last year and noticed missing a couple months back. so glad u all stepped in to fill my Top void. #1 even !!!!
75,000 page views later...
alternate vision of myspace = viral low cost promo, DIY marketing for several industries especially all forms of entertainment..
:::MAIN::: Blu Bird / Virtue/ 50- energy/energy - Blaster
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I have the same issue on Firefox and IE! Other myspace pages show just fine including my own!
[/ QUOTE ]
OK, glad it is not just me then. I think something in their coding or layout is broken.
Cheers!
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We are looking into this now, the page was set up using IE 7 and Firefox 2 both of those work fine.
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What version are the people getting borked pages using?
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IE 7 and Firefox 2 with Vista and without.
Cheers!
No offense to Memphis, but "that's all moot now" is a little extreme. Apparantly, we're being forced to go to myspace to see updates.
To anyone else, if it bothers you that much, ignore it. Stop wasting time with pointless post and mindless rants.
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Sounds like you must be bending to the will of some pedophile who can't find enough kids on myspace, instead of focusing all your energy into fixing the million bugs that you keep neglecting to attend to
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You want the person who maintains their MySpace page writing code? I thought you didn't LIKE bugs?
Except...its not already split.
I think you misunderstand the relationship between NCSoft and Cryptic. Cryptic is a Vendor....that is, they provide a service to NCSoft for which they are paid, under contract you can be sure, but Cryptic doesn't get to negotiate their budget on a weekly or monthly basis. They signed a development and support contract with NCSoft. They may bill NCSoft monthly or perhaps annually but you can bet that the tighter the margins are the more intense the scrutiny becomes.
In the end, one thing is sure. The game continues only so long as NCSoft is willing to keep spending money to keep it going. Thats only going to happen as long as they are making what they feel to be a reasonable return on their investment. We don't know what the cut off is.
I know that people are expecting thet they'll get little tidbits of info by talking to a Dev or something on Myspace. I'll tell you....I'll be pretty unhappy if the Dev's run over to Myspace and talk about upcoming releases and events when they won't do it on the Official Forums for their game.